User blog:Krayfish/Light World - Sleepy Status Update 3
With the forums on the new site now operational, I've uploaded a new blog post. You can read it here. Let me know if you are having technical difficulties with the site. As mentioned last time, the forum plugin is still in beta so it may be a little buggy. For those of you having trouble viewing it, here's the blog: Original blog Greetings and welcome to another Sleepy Status Update. This time around, I'm going to give some in depth details of what's going on. See the previous blog post "Sleepy Status Update 2" if you would like to see the artwork and music so far. It's really difficult to say just how complete the game is at this point, but I will continue providing regular status updates. I can make an educated guess that an alpha version of the game will be playable around the end of July and the beginning of August. If all else fails, I'll continue putting videos out. Programming I've been testing out the game using a build for Windows 64-bit. The current file size of the game at present is 1 GB with a large chunk of that being the game's music. Me being a fan of games with good music, I'm currently unwilling to compromise the quality to reduce the file size, but I am willing to optimize the code to make it run more efficiently and make it easier to read. It involves redoing a lot of what I've done already so from an outside perspective, it doesn't look much is getting done, but trust me, it is. The final game will hopefully be no more than 1.5 GB as most of the music is already in place. I've also tried to make everything as modular as possible to make it easier to develop. That is, design the systems so that they are much more universal and reusable. Currently, you can spend about 30 minutes exploring and seeing the game world although there's actually very little to do except fight random encounters. As of this post, I currently cannot put out a demo right now. I'm in the process of removing and replacing older code, and because this tampers with a lot of core mechanics, the game currently cannot be built into a final product. (In other words, think of it as me just having disassembled a car. It's not going to run in its current state, but once it is rebuilt and packaged together, it will be better than it was before.) After all of these changes are complete, the game will be far more flexible than it was before. Characters will be able to have a theoretically unlimited number of moves (as opposed to just three as it is right now) and you'll be able to have more than four party members. There's still the limitation of space on the screen so you can only have four party members on the screen, but in the game's memory, you could swap out the main four characters for temporary party members or other minor characters to help you out. Audio Music and audio makes up the bulk of the game's file size. I'm still missing some download links for some of Tim's tracks (like the Entranced track), but other than that, most of the music listed in the previous blog is already in the game. There's about 40 minutes of soundtrack in total, which is a lot for a game this size and scope. A lot of music still remains to be reorchestrated, but in its current state is still passable in quality. I've found what I believe to be a fairly balanced level of compression vs. quality so the music should not be compromised. More music links Links to most of the music can be found in the previous blog. Here are some new ones: *Nutcracker Toccata - This is the theme song that plays inside of Charlie's former castle during the time it gets taken over by hostile forces. I admit that I took a lot of inspiration from the Super Mario World castle theme (please let me know if it's too similar - I'm willing to change it), but really, I couldn't help but pay homage. This song is a creepy, mysterious theme which uses the same melody as Charlie's theme symbolizing the darker side of her personality. *Machines of Madness - I had this sudden rush of inspiration and ended up composing this tune in less than one hour. This is the theme intended for Magne's airship. Think a eastern European lament played to a very mechanical beat, mysterious but also technological. *Encampment - This is the theme song for the encampment outside the castle where Charlie keeps her army ready for battle. It's a military-type theme featuring snare drums and a taiko and would generally fit the theme of soldiers training for combat. *Desert Village - This is intended for the village where Galiana is. I decided sitars and kotos were most appropriate to evoke that mystical feeling to it. *Blood Ritual - This theme is for Mt. Golgotha, intended to sound very ethereal and unnatural with lots of synth instruments. I used the new soundfont Tim showed me, and I have to say, this is probably a personal favorite of mine just for how creepy it is. Graphics Art is progressing quite well with many colored pencil sketches done so far. Although it would certainly be a pipe dream, I do not see the entire game being rendered in this style as I don't have the budget to create Disney-style hand drawn animation. While the title screen will still appear in this style, the rest of the game will still use sprites and pixels. To compensate for the low resolution textures, I'm taking full advantage of Unreal Engine's lighting and rendering capabilities so that it's in high definition or at least, close to looking high definition. I am targetting a frame rate of 60 fps, so while Unreal Engine is certainly capable of handling photorealistic graphics, I'm choosing to have PS1 level of polygons to ensure the game can still run very smoothly on systems that are not too high end. The realistic lighting and high screen resolution makes up a signficiant chunk of the processing power, so less polygons helps to put less strain. The file size currently puts phones out of the question, but being careful enough, I could actually have this game run on a tablet. Story With the help of Noble (aka ReachNetwork), we've managed to create a very rich storyline with very colorful characters. The main campaign is sort of being written on the spot, but every major character so far now has very clear motivations and desires. Just from my point of view, you can get an idea of who these characters are just from what they say to each other, showing rather than telling. The plot as it currently stands is that Amie wakes up in Light World with no memory, and throughout the course of her adventures with other strange characters, she discovers more about her personal life. Unlike most protagonists though, Amie's life is actually quite mundane yet very personal and relatable. She's not some ancient hero reincarnated or any kind of remarkable celebrity, but just simply an ordinary schoolgirl leading an ordinary life that just so happened to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although she's enamored with Light World, in the end, she wants to return home to see her friends and family again. She's a hero not necessarily for the world, but just for herself. The antagonist, Magne, is a boy in an unfortunate situation. Having grown up with abusive parents, he met an untimely end in an accident so now his soul is stranded in Light World. Not having accepted his grim fate, he desperately seeks a way to return to Earth, and the only way he currently knows of is to steal Amie's body. Magne has learned how to channel dark power from the demon known as Antithesis whose spawn take on the form of a human's darkest desires and thoughts. His desire to return to life is out of desperation. Being no more than perhaps 12 or 13 years old, his life ended way too early for him to experience it as it was taken away by the cruel strings of fate. Magne wants nothing more than a second chance, but is willing to go to extremes to do so. With the help of some friends, it's up to Amie to discover who she is and return home before Magne takes her body. How she goes about this can be resolved in a number of ways. In the most ideal situation, she would be able to reason with Magne and get him to accept his own fate, but Antithesis is a powerful creature of hatred and desire and would not be so willing to release its grip on the world. The other characters: Bella, Charlie and Savien all have equally compelling stories. Bella is a wanderer, a new member of a coven of witches on a rite of passage to harmonize herself with the physical and spiritual realms. Charlie, having been in a state of in-between in Light World due to a brain injury, has taken a hyper-practical route and has taken the time to study Light World's physics and even build a kingdom. Savien was a victim of a mad experiment where his body was stolen from him, leaving him a stranded soul just like Magne. Each of them will have their own internal conflicts to solve as they are taken on very personal quests. Release The current plan is that the alpha version will be distributed via the Omniverse Nexus website directly. However, once we move into the beta phase, I'm planning to put the game on Steam via Greenlight. While I am planning to have the game remain free of charge, it's actually Valve who gets to set the price. Most likely, the game will be free as this is basically a zero budget game with the only costs being the monthly payments on 3DS Max. If the game ends up not being free and say, costs $5, I'll store all the earnings into a fund specifically dedicated to the Omniverse Nexus. "Krayfish Entertainment" and "Omniverse Nexus" are just names at the moment and dealing with things such as W2's is beyond my domain (and considering that only two other members of the team are from the US, this would complicate things even further), so it's only fair that any earnings from the game would only be used for Omniverse Nexus stuff. For example, paying off the fees to keep the domain hosted or investing in better software to allow the creation of future products. There's also the issue as to what name to release the game under. "Krayfish Entertainment" is more about my own personal projects, so the game will be more prominently promoted as "Omniverse Nexus". I got suggestions to use names such as "Nexus Creations" (we likely can't use that name in particular as there's a building in India that has that name), although I'd be fine if it was just "Omniverse Nexus". Marketing I'm planning to start more active advertisement of the game once the alpha goes public. Since this game is already becoming much larger in scope than I originally planned, I might even make a separate site just for Light World (which will likely just be "lightworld.omniversenexus.net" I'm not totally the greatest at social media, but the first outlet that will be used for promotion will be YouTube. I'll make videos showing off more features of the game, and you are free to record your own Let's Plays, commentaries, etc. to help draw attention. Connection to the Omniverse Nexus I've started to see the Omniverse Nexus becoming more of a branding for things that we've created, especially considering the fact that we haven't gotten new users in years. Light World, as it stands, would be less of an adaptation of the Omniverse Nexus and more of a product created by it given how closely I've been working with you guys on this. So in other words, the Omniverse Nexus on Light World would just signify who made it. As for actual story connections with the other settings, it won't be that significant. Conclusion Let me know if you have any questions. And be sure to post your ideas, comments, criticisms and the likes below. Videos Category:Blog posts